Court to rule on halt of prisons recruitment, suspension of national budget-making process
The courts will hear a petition filed by a lobby group seeking to suspend the national budget-making process until the government addresses Kenya’s ballooning crisis of unpaid bills.
The Employment and Labour Relations Court will on Monday rule whether the contested prison services recruitment and promotions will be halted.
This is after the Attorney General failed to respond to a certificate application by the petitioners, Peter Agogo and Henry Muriithi, and sought a day to respond.
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Justice Hellen Wasilwa ordered the parties to appear before her on Monday to accord her ample time to familiarise herself with the facts and responses.
On its part, the Public Service Commission informed the court that it will not be participating in the interim application but will take part in the hearing of the main petition.
Lawyer representing the Petitioners urged the court to protect the substratum of the petition by temporarily staying the promotion interviews slated to run at the headquarters, regional and the Kenya Prisons Staff College from May 5 to May 9, 2025.
The Milimani High Court will also hear a petition filed by a lobby group seeking to suspend the national budget-making process until the government addresses Kenya’s ballooning crisis of unpaid bills.
In a petition filed by Operation Linda Jamii, the petitioner, Professor Fred Ogola, claims that the pending bills have become a life-threatening burden for millions of Kenyans, especially SMEs, contractors, and ordinary households.
"As of June 30, 2024, the total pending bills stood at a staggering Sh698.27 billion, which has the national government at Sh516.27 billion and county governments at Sh182 billion", Ogola says in court documents.
He argues that in the three months leading up to June 2024, the national government’s unpaid bills surged by Sh29.4 billion. Despite these alarming figures, the 2025 Budget Policy Statement (BPS) released on February 13, 2025, he says, fails to outline any plan for settling these debts.
Instead, the Treasury proposes borrowing Sh60 billion to fund MSMEs under the Hustler Fund, while the same MSMEs are the primary victims.
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